A series of one-on-one interviews and write ups of activities and approaches, Scene Reports are lightweight, collaborative ethnographies that lend broader insight into what’s happening in digital humanities (DH) and libraries, galleries, archives, and museums. At a moment when our community is growing and shifting in subtle and substantial ways, Scene Reports constitute a low-barrier, community-curated effort to represent our diversity and reach. Designed as flexible interviews, Scene Reports also serve as a complement to the dh+lib Registry; where the Registry collates contributed descriptions of institutional DH, the Scene Reports go a level deeper to tell the underlying stories of individuals and efforts.
In this formulation, you are both interviewers and interviewees, reporters and subjects. Anyone can submit a scene report. Is there a particular person, project, approach, or story you think the community should know about? We want to hear it!
To start, find a person to interview. It can be a co-worker, someone you met at a conference, or perhaps a respected colleague you’ve been looking for an excuse to chat up. The interview can be via phone, email, or in person. Your questions can focus more on the scene– the effort, project, program, undertaking– or the person. Ask as many questions as the two of you would like (see below for suggestions), and send the 5-7 best responses to dhandlib.acrl@gmail.com. In order to simplify the submission process, the dh+lib editors will take care of uploading, formatting, and publishing, and we’ll work with you to get to the final draft.
Here are a few questions to help get your conversation started. Of course, you’re encourage to create you own as well.
- How did you get involved in DH and libraries/museums/archives?
- What projects are you currently working on that you are excited about?
- How are contributions and attributions structured in your project/program?
- What’s next for DH and libraries? What do you see as some of the unanswered questions?
- Whose work, in DH and/or libraries, do you recommend? Whose work do you return to?
- How do you see DH fitting into LIS or museum studies training and professional development?
- How are you seeing library workers and libraries shift in their approach to DH?
- What do you wish DH did better? That libraries did better?
A caveat: Scene Reports are designed to take editors out of the process. They’re also published pieces, easily discoverable online. So there are some basic rules: Scene Reports require both parties to sign off on the final version. And: No libel, no infringement, no false representation.
Contact dhandlib.acrl@gmail.com or @dhandlib with any questions/comments/feedback.
Scene Reports are published on a rolling basis.